Murder case investigator: Chain saws had real odor'

WEST CHESTER – The prosecution in the trial of Laquanta Chapman on Friday presented a grim photographic tour of the house in which it contends the defendant shot and killed an unarmed teenager and then chain-sawed his body in order to dispose of it.

Jurors hearing the case in Common Pleas Court saw multiple crime scene photos of the home’s unfinished basement, as well as trash bags police found in the house containing bloody clothing and cleaning supplies that authorities say Chapman and others used to try to cover up evidence of 16-year-old Aaron “Head” Turner’s death.

And they saw close-up photos of the two chains saws the prosecution says were used to dismember Turner’s body up on a makeshift butcher table in Chapman’s basement –after having seen the blood-splattered table itself–and of the landfill search for Turner’s missing body.

The evidence all came during day two of Chapman’s murder trial, presided over by Judge William P. Mahon.

Chapman, 33, of Coatesville is charged with first and third-degree murder, abuse of a corpse, cruelty to animals, and various drug and weapons charges stemming from the October 2008 shooting death of Turner, a Coatesville high school student who lived across the street. The prosecution is seeking the death penalty.

The trial is expected to continue Monday with evidence, including the second of two statements that Chapman gave police following his arrest in which he denies having anything to do with Turner’s disappearance, but speaks of executing and cutting up the bodies of two pit bulls.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Patrick Carmody, who is leading the prosecution, told jurors in his opening statement that only one dog was killed, and that was done to cover up the murder. Chapman’s description of the second dog’s death, Carmody contends, is actually a description of how Turner was killed.

The defense, led by West Chester attorney Evan Kelly, concedes that Turner was murdered but has pointed blame for the teenager’s death on Chapman’s cousin, 23-year-old Bryan Byrd, who is scheduled to testify for the prosecution sometime next week.

For most of the afternoon Friday, the jury of seven men and five women listened to and watched a lengthy videotaped interview of Chapman conducted by Coatesville Police Sgt. Chris McEvoy, one of the investigators in the case. The session was taped the evening after police raided Chapman’s home in November 2008, looking for drugs and weapons, and finding what Carmody called in his opening statement “a house of crime.”

In the interview, McEvoy questioned Chapman closely about the amount of blood found in the basement, and on the clothing and cleaning implements police found in three trash bags.

Chapman said that the blood was from a female put bull that he had killed, beating her to death with a car jack because she had viciously killed puppies he was raising. He said he had carried the dog in three pairs of jeans that were in the trash, leaving them blood stained.

“So if I take all the pieces of clothing and test them for blood, I’m going to find dog’s blood?” McEvoy asked. Chapman then added that he had killed another dog a few weeks earlier, and that blood from that dog would also be found.

But Chapman had more trouble explaining a black jacket that police found in the house covered in blood that McEvoy told him had a bullet hole and a bullet fragmentin it. Chapman began telling a story about a man named “Hood” who had stayed at his house and who owed him rent. That man, he suggested, may have left it there.

“If you shot somebody in that black jacket, you would tell me?” McEvoy asked.

“Yeah, If I shot somebody I would tell you,” Chapman answered.

Earlier, the crime scene photos that the jurors saw of the house were displayed on a large projection screen in Courtroom One, and on smaller video display terminals in the jury box itself. Step by step, the pictures showed the evidence that the police had collected during a search of Chapman’s South Chester Avenue home on Nov. 15, 2008, two weeks after Turner was reported missing.

The photos of the alleged murder scene itself were like something out of a particularly graphic horror movie. There were blood spattered walls, a water heater smeared with blood, crumbling and decayed walls, and a support pole used to propped up the basement ceiling that was covered with human tissue and debris that police later determined belonged to Turner.

Retired Coatesville Detective Gerald Pawling, who was the lead crime scene investigator on the case, described each photo for the panel and how samples were taken from items found in the basement to be sent to a lab for DNA testing.

Pawling, under questioning from Carmody, said that dozens and dozens of samples of tissue, blood, hair, and other material had been sent to a private lab for testing because the Pennsylvania State Police’s crime lab was backed up. He said that eventually, testing of some items was halted because the process became too expensive, running into the thousands of dollars.

The samples were compared with the DNA samples of Turner, Chapman, and Byrd. Testimony about how they matched will be offered in the final part of the prosecution’s case.

Carmody also showed the jurors photos taken of the two chain saws that police found in Chapman’s house, and which Byrd later told them had been used to cut up Turner’s body on the wood-block table found in the basement.

The chainsaws, an orange Stihl model and a green Poulan, were spotted with blood and tissue, and clogged with what Pawling said looked like “gook” but which was actually human tissue mixed with oil and dirt. There were pieces of tissue on the chain’s themselves when Pawling and other investigators brought them to the Coatesville police station. Moreover, they reeked, the detective testified.

Later, Pawling described efforts police had made following the search of Chapman’s home to find Turner’s body. They responded to calls from city residents who found bones in their yard, which turned out to be dog bones, and tried to use a homing device to find an ankle monitor Turner had been wearing when he disappeared.

Ultimately, Pawling said police went to the Lanchester Landfill after getting reports from trash collectors about suspicious garbage bags taken from Chapman’s home before the search there.

In cold and snowy conditions, Pawling and other detectives searched with cadaver sniffing dogs through mounds and mounds of stinking refuse at the landfill, digging several feet below the surface to look for any evidence of a human body there. It was gruesome work, he said.

Because it was after hunting season, the investigators came upon decaying animal carcasses that had been identified by the search dogs.

“We were looking through trash bags” for a month, he said. “It was hard. The smell was unbearable. It was worse than trying to find a needle in a haystack. This went on for several days. But we were unable to detect anything.”

Turner was not declared dead until June 2009, when tissue evidence found in the basement containing his DNA was taken to Dr. Richard Callery, the Delaware medical examiner who is used in forensic cases in Chester County. It was then that Turner’s family was officially informed that he was deceased.